Free Republic

UPDATE (1:52am): NEWT IS OUT. RPV TO UPDATE SHORTLY.

Yes, Virginia, there are more than four Republican presidential candidates. But they won't all appear on your primary ballot. Thursday was the deadline for candidates to file for the Old Dominion's March 6 primary, and only four made the cut: Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Ron Paul. But Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum didn't make it, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The culprit? Virginia's high bar to get on the ballot: signatures from at least 10,000 registered voters, with 400 from each of the state's 11 congressional districts. (Compare that with New Hampshire's primary, which requires...

The last time Newt Gingrich was in Columbia, about 10 peopled showed up to hear him speak at the Lizard's Thicket on Assembly Street. He was at 5 percent in the polls, had lost nearly all of his top S.C. consultants and his campaign was $1.1 million in debt. But Friday, he spoke to about 300 people at Blue Marlin restaurant in the Vista as the frontrunner in South Carolina. He has 12 paid staffers in the state, and - according to reports - he has raised $10 million in this quarter alone. And he's betting it all on South...

Newt Gingrich intends to draw a contrast of his own with Mitt Romney when he buses through Iowa next week in the lead-up to the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses – and he’s going right for Romney’s economic plan and experience. The Gingrich campaign has spent the past week on the defensive in the face of criticism from Romney himself that the former House speaker is unreliable, from the Romney campaign for not being staunchly conservative, and from a Romney-affiliated “Super PAC” with an onslaught of negative advertising. But after spending the week scolding the Romney camp for negativity in order...

The Virginia State Republican Party has announced that Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul are the only three GOP contenders to qualify for their March 6 GOP primary ballot. Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Huntsman & Rick Perry have all failed to qualify under Virginia's strict standards which require 10,000 overall signatures with at least 400 from each of the state's 11 Congressional districts. Bachmann, Santorum and Huntsman were expected to come up short of the requirements but Perry's failure has been noted as a surprise.

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (Reuters) - Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich on Friday urged rival Ron Paul to explain his links to newsletters two decades ago that carried the Texas congressman's name and contained racist, anti-homosexual and anti-Israel rants. "I think that Congressman Paul has to explain his own situation and how he could have had a decade of newsletters that had his name on it that he apparently wasn't aware of," .... .....The eight-page letter, which appears to carry Paul's signature at the end, also warns that the U.S. government's redesign of currency to include different colors - a move...

Newt Gingrich is planning to turn to a sharp "jobs and growth" message both on the airwaves and in over 30 appearances next week in the final run-up to the Iowa caucuses, according to campaign officials. Gingrich's campaign, acknowledging that they've seen his Iowa numbers erode under an intense assault, said the former speaker would use a new round of post-Christmas TV commericals and a bus tour across Iowa to draw an implicit but clear contrast between his economic plan and that of Mitt Romney. Gingrich aides are also prepping a round of endorsements from conservative economists and supply-side thinkers...

Newt Gingrich said Friday that a former CIA official has told him that President Obama's administration has leaked more secrets than any administration that official had seen. "You have an Obama administration who's dedicated to appeasing our enemies and dedicated to giving away our secrets," Gingrich said in an interview with WHO radio in Des Moines. "I've had a former very senior CIA person tell me this White House has leaked more secrets than any White House in his lifetime." A senior Obama campaign official said in response: "His definition of appeasement must be decimating al Qaeda's leadership." Obama has...

Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich on Friday urged rival Ron Paul to explain his links to newsletters two decades ago that carried the Texas congressman’s name and contained racist, anti-homosexual and anti-Israel rants. “I think that Congressman Paul has to explain his own situation and how he could have had a decade of newsletters that had his name on it that he apparently wasn’t aware of,” Gingrich said. “I think that somebody should say to him ‘OK, how much money did you make from the newsletters?’ These things are really nasty, and he didn’t know about it? Wasn’t aware of...

One of Newt Gingrich’s first acts as president, if he is elected, will be to drop all of the Justice Department’s lawsuits against states -- including the federal government’s lawsuit challenging South Carolina’s new immigration law. “It’s pretty outrageous when the federal government fails to do its job and then attacks the states for trying to fill the gap created by the federal government,” Gingrich said on the back porch of the Blue Marlin in the Vista after speaking to a crowd of about 300 people for about an hour. Thursday, a federal judge threw out three sections of South...

Columbia, SC Friday, December 23, 2011 GOP presidential candidate takes a break from Iowa and New Hampshire and travels down the Eastern seaboard to campaign. After campaigning in Virginia, Gingrich is in South Carolina, which holds the first-in-the-south primary. He is at The Blue Marlin Restaurant in Columbia, South Carolina to discuss the issues important to him and answer questions from the diners at the restaurant. WATCH CSPAN2 ONLINE

Can Newt Gingrich beat Barack Obama next November? Sure he can. It's really important to understand this. Whoever the Republican candidate is, that candidate will be subject to what Obama allies say is a "$750 million wrecking ball." Obama's whole campaign — totaling $1 billion — will be a savage attack on the Republican nominee because Obama can't run on his record and he knows it. And I believe that, if the Republican candidate sticks to the high road and focuses on Obama's record, the American people will see through the mud and will vote Republican. At this moment, Newt...

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest GOP candidate of the them all? This seems to be the daily battle being fought in the news media. By the looks of things, I’d say Gingrich is the fairest in the land.    His lead in polls  may explain the Washington Post running multiple articles daily tearing down his candidacy despite the fact Republican voters favor Gingrich over Mitt Romney as their guy. The tearing down of Gingrich by the left wing media makes you wonder if this is a one big set for Republicans to lose in 2012 if...

Mitt Romney's campaign released an online ad this week called “Earning it: Bedford, NH,” in which were featured segments from Romney's Tuesday night speech in Bedford. That would be the meeting at the Bedford Town Hall in which Romney took zero questions. Since when is that “earning it” in New Hampshire? Romney is playing it safe, trying to avoid being asked questions to which he does not have scripted, well-rehearsed answers. He wants to avoid a moment like he had last week in Chez Vachon when a gay veteran confronted him. The lack of a robust retail primary this time...

Say, doesn’t this remind people of another debate challenge? One in which one candidate bet another a bunch of money as an intimidation tactic? Remember when the man who offered the bet claimed a refusal was an admission of error? Good times, good times: Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Thursday spurned a challenge from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, his chief rival for the Republican presidential nomination, for a one-on-one debate in the run-up to the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, but he dismissed the notion, suggested by Mr. Gingrich, that he was afraid to participate in such a faceoff....

Hello Field Hands. It’s twelve days to the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses to choose between Republican candidates for the US presidential nomination. I’ve been busy in Mexico and other lands in this 20ll, The Year of Civil Resistance. You can read more about all that the post below this one (and please do, you gotta know about the world around you to better understand where you are). But I heard a rumor that you have a presidential election gearing up in the United States, and – alas and of course – the political reporters and pundits seem as clueless and hapless...

Newt Gingrich Former Speaker of the House 27 Mitt Romney Former Governor of Massachusetts 21 Ron Paul U.S. Representative from Texas 12 Rick Perry Governor of Texas 7 Michele Bachmann U.S. Representative from Minnesota 6 Rick Santorum Former Senator from Pennsylvania 4 Jon Huntsman Former Governor of Utah 1

After Newt Gingrich rose in the polls, criticism of the former House speaker began grabbing headlines. But Republican establishment attacks on Newt are not new. Newt’s political career has been devoted to mounting a conservative challenge to the establishment’s desire to play the Washington power game of go along to get along. As a junior congressman, Newt founded the Conservative Opportunity Society (COS), a group of activist members of Congress whose goal was to challenge the liberal welfare state but whose first target was the Republican establishment in the House of Representatives. The “old bulls” who dominated the party in...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has a slight lead over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney among Virginia Republicans in the race for president, according to a new poll. The Quinnipiac University poll, released Wednesday morning, shows Gingrich at 30 percent and Romney at 25 percent among Republican voters. No other candidate tops nine percent. In a head-to-head matchup, Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, left, and former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Gingrich tops Romney by a larger margin, 47 percent to 39 percent...

In an interview with the AP while campaigning in New Hampshire today, Mitt Romney said he would not meet Newt Gingrich in a one on one debate "out of respect" for the other candidates in the GOP race. What a copout. Were Herman Cain, Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman being disrespectful to Romney when they agreed to one on one debates with Gingrich? When it comes to Newt, I guess Mitt is content to hide behind his surrogates and third party attack ads. And here I thought Mitt wanted to earn the nomination. Well, if Mitt wants to earn my...